Zone One: A Novel

In this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuild­ing civilization under orders from the provisional govern­ment based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan.

John Henry Days

J. Sutter is a bonafide junketeer - a freelance writer, travelling from city to city, hungry for free meals and the discarded sales receipts of others to claim on his expense account. Travelling into the backwoods of West Virginia to write a piece on the unveiling of the new John Henry postage stamp and the ensuing John Henry Days festival, J. continues his nearly record-setting, three-month junket binge.

The Underground Railroad (Oprah's Book Club)

The Newest Oprah Book Club 2016 Selection. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood - where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned - Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.

Sag Harbor: A Novel

The year is 1985. Benji Cooper is one of the only black students at an elite prep school in Manhattan. He spends his falls and winters going to roller-disco bar mitzvahs, playing too much Dungeons and Dragons, and trying to catch glimpses of nudity on late-night cable TV. After a tragic mishap on his first day of high school, when Benji reveals his deep enthusiasm for the horror movie magazine Fangoria, his social doom is sealed for the next four years.

Swing Time

Two brown girls dream of being dancers - but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early 20s, never to be revisited but never quite forgotten either....

The Sellout: A Novel

A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality: the black Chinese restaurant.

The long-awaited first novel from the author of Tenth of December: a moving and original father-son story featuring none other than Abraham Lincoln, as well as an unforgettable cast of supporting characters, living and dead, historical and invented. February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill.

Kindred

Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. After saving a drowning white boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life. During numerous such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes she's been given a challenge.

The Colossus of New York: A City in Thirteen Parts

New York Times best-selling author and New York native Colson Whitehead composes a breathtaking tribute to his hometown. Whitehead captures the very essence of New York, infusing his reflections with the energy that permeates the city.

October: The Story of the Russian Revolution

The renowned fantasy and science fiction writer China Mieville has long been inspired by the ideals of the Russian Revolution, and here, on the centenary of the revolution, he provides his own distinctive take on its history. In February 1917, in the midst of bloody war, Russia was still an autocratic monarchy: nine months later it became the first socialist state in world history. How did this unimaginable transformation take place? How was a ravaged and backward country, swept up in a desperately unpopular war, rocked by not one but two revolutions?

Homegoing: A Novel

Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into different villages in 18th-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and will live in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising children who will be sent abroad to be educated before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the empire. Esi, imprisoned beneath Effia in the castle's women's dungeon and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, will be sold into slavery.

The Lathe of Heaven

In a future world racked by violence and environmental catastrophes, George Orr wakes up one day to discover that his dreams have the ability to alter reality. He seeks help from Dr. William Haber, a psychiatrist who immediately grasps the power George wields. Soon George must preserve reality itself as Dr. Haber becomes adept at manipulating George's dreams for his own purposes.

Bloodchild and Other Stories

Six remarkable stories from a master of modern science fiction. Octavia E. Butler's classic "Bloodchild," winner of both the Nebula and Hugo awards, anchors this collection of incomparable stories and essays. "Bloodchild" is set on a distant planet where human children spend their lives preparing to become hosts for the offspring of the alien Tlic. Sometimes the procedure is harmless, but often it is not. Also included is the Hugo Award - winning "Speech Sounds," about a near future in which humans must adapt after an apocalyptic event robs them of their ability to speak.

The White Boy Shuffle: A Novel

Paul Beatty's hilarious and scathing debut novel, The White Boy Shuffle, is about Gunnar Kaufman, an awkward, black surfer bum who is moved by his mother from Santa Monica to urban West Los Angeles. There, he begins to undergo a startling transformation from neighborhood outcast to basketball superstar, and eventually to reluctant messiah of a "divided, downtrodden people".

The Sympathizer: A Novel

Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2016. It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong.

Parable of the Talents

Environmental devastation and economic chaos have turned America into a land of horrifying depravity. Assault, theft, sexual abuse, slavery, and murder are commonplace. And a zealous, bigoted tyrant has won his way into the White House. Directly opposed is Lauren Olamina, founder of Earthseed - a new faith that teaches "God Is Change". Persecuted for "heathen" beliefs as much as for having a black female leader, Earthseed's followers face a life-and-death struggle to preserve their vision.

The Empathy Exams: Essays

Beginning with her experience as a medical actor who was paid to act out symptoms for medical students to diagnose, Leslie Jamison's visceral and revealing essays ask essential questions about our basic understanding of others: How should we care about each other? How can we feel another's pain, especially when pain can be assumed, distorted, or performed? Is empathy a tool by which to test or even grade each other?

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to previously untapped data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.

A Book of American Martyrs: A Novel

In this striking, enormously affecting novel, Joyce Carol Oates tells the story of two very different yet intimately linked American families. Luther Dunphy is an ardent Evangelical who envisions himself as acting out God's will when he assassinates an abortion provider in his small Ohio town while Augustus Voorhees, the idealistic doctor who is killed, leaves behind a wife and children scarred and embittered by grief.

Parable of the Sower

God is change. That is the central truth of the Earthseed movement, whose unlikely prophet is 18-year-old Lauren Olamina. The young woman's diary entries tell the story of her life amid a violent 21st-century hell of walled neighborhoods and drug-crazed pyromaniacs - and reveal her evolving Earthseed philosophy. Against a backdrop of horror emerges a message of hope: if we are willing to embrace divine change, we will survive to fulfill our destiny among the stars.

Apex Hides the Hurt

A small Midwestern town is having an identity crisis: should they have a new techno-savvy name or a name honoring the freedmen who founded the town? Or is the current name just fine? They call in a professional naming consultant, famous for naming Apex bandages, guaranteed to match any skin color. But even he is losing his faith in monikers.

Underground Airlines

It is the present day, and the world is as we know it: smartphones, social networking, and Happy Meals. Save for one thing: The Civil War never occurred. A gifted young black man calling himself Victor has struck a bargain with federal law enforcement, working as a bounty hunter for the US Marshal Service. He's got plenty of work. In this version of America, slavery continues in four states called "the Hard Four". On the trail of a runaway known as Jackdaw, Victor arrives in Indianapolis knowing that something isn't right - with the case file, with his work, and with the country itself.

Publisher's Summary

In a marvelous debut novel that has been compared to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Joseph Heller's ,i>Catch-22, Colson Whitehead has created a strangely skewed world of elevators and the people who control their ups and downs. Lila Mae Watson - the first black female inspector in the world's tallest city - has the highest performance rating of anyone in the Department of Elevator Inspectors. This upsets her superiors, because Lila is an Intuitionist: she inspects elevators simply by the feelings she gets riding in them. When a brand new elevator crashes, Lila becomes caught in the conflict between her Intuitionist methods and the beliefs of the power-holding Empiricists. Her only hope for clearing her name lies in finding the plans of an eccentric elevator genius for the "black box": a perfect elevator. A brilliant allegory for the interaction of the races, The Intuitionist is also an intriguing mystery, solidly grounded by the exceptional narration of Peter Jay Fernandez.

I follow Colson Whitehead on Twitter, where his steady and lively bon mots pepper you from all different angles of the universe. My thought was a novel from a writer that bright and fresh should be equally worthwhile, and indeed it was. The book is a treatise on the meaning and perceptions of life and flutters between a straight forward plot and what could almost be fanciful Asimov musings on humanity without quite leaving known reality. The plot itself is not particularly relevant and serves mostly as a giant Macguffin allowing Whitehead to focus laser-like on race relations and color perceptions at certain times through complex metaphors and at other times with simple straight talk. I find Colson's writing fresh, fun and light-hearted even when addressing dense and dramatic issues and this is where the pleasure of the novel came through. The plot itself was neither here nor there, and the bitter taste race was just out of reach; but the reason to get this book is to simply enjoy Whitehead's writing and fresh turns of phrase. I came away not quite sure exactly what it was I had gotten through, but missed it all the same. The narration and audio are excellent and first rate. Good stuff, recommended.

The Intuitonist is one of those rare books that works as a page turning whodunit as well as a real interesting book about ideas. Colson Whitehead has a real original voice that borders on satire (Vonnegut, Ellson's 'Invisible Man') but has characters that are fully realized and not grotesques or representative of an idea or concept (a issue that hinders satire sometimes). There is a real sly comedy in this book that reminded me of that movie 'Brazil' or 'Modern Times' man can not contain its own beuracracy and technology as well as some social commentary.

The book involves an elevator accident and the world of elevator inspectors (any one in a trade or specialized field will appreciate how Whitehead creates a macro culture for elevator inspector) and how different inspectors use different methods (intution vs emperical). Just this plot point alone gives readers a real interesting theme to chew on (the eternal struggle of intuition vs empericism) but suddenly an additional theme is added via plot twist (one of the only times I remember a change in theme had the same gut wallop of a cool plot twist) and the reader is left with he last hour being are a brilliant exercise in satire/social commentary.

I downloaded the book from Audible.com and could not put it down. Not surprisingly like any good novel, I found myself emotionally moved by the story and perspective.It had a few technical errors, but still a good read. Well done.

Whitehead's book is phenomenal and creates a believable and strange world of spiritualism mixed with technology and empiricism. One criticism: the reader is incredibly thirsty, and the sound of him swallowing for hours on end became very distracting. Please get that man some water and give him some breaks to drinks it.

"The Intuitionist" is a top notch read. It's pretty much about elevator inspectors, which one of them is black and also a woman when race was an issue back then. The different floors in the department is not a straight forward read, but more like different dreams in each floor for Lila Mae. It's really hard to explain it. The entire story feels like a metaphor for racism at the time. It's not like The Help or The Color Purple, but its more subtle. Great writing from Colson Whitehead.

The Intuitionist is a strange book – part mystery, part philosophical musing, part political something.

The parallel that struck me in listening to it was with Brett Easton Ellis’ Glamorama. In Glamorama (another strange book), it comes to the point where everyone in the book is a model, or connected with modeling in some way or other. In The Intuitionist, the inescapable connection is with elevators. Almost every character is an elevator inspector or someone who depends directly on elevators or the elevator inspectors in some way. Even the only school mentioned is the Institute for Vertical Transport – a school whose entire curriculum is geared around inspecting and maintaining elevators.

Lila Mae Watson is the first black woman to become an elevator inspector in a famous city that has to be New York. In her time and place, there are two schools of thought regarding the best way to inspect elevators – empiricism and intuitionism. Empiricists look at the nuts and bolts and cables of elevators to see if they are properly installed and maintained. Intuitionists apparently just sense what is going on – feel the vibes, as it were – and know if something is wrong and what it is. Lila Mae is an Intuitionist, and she is never wrong.

The problem is, a new elevator in a new city building crashes – goes into freefall and is utterly destroyed – less than twenty-four hours after she has inspected it and passed it as ok. This happens in the thick of an election for the head of the elevator inspectors’ union, a contest between an empiricist candidate (the incumbent) and an intuitionist candidate. In this world, somewhat contrary to the usual practice, to be head of the union is also to be head of the municipal department of elevator inspectors. At first, it appears that the elevator has been sabotaged by the empiricists and that Lila Mae has been set up to take the fall for the failure.

There follows a long round of encounters with gangland thug types related to both sides of the struggle, and another sabotage. There are also some flashbacks to Lila Mae’s time in school at the Institute for Vertical Transport, and a lot of reflecting on the theory of elevators, especially as put forth by the hero of the Intuitionists, a certain James Fulton, and the Black Box he proposed as the perfect elevator. Lila Mae is unexpectedly drawn into an attempt to find Fulton’s missing notebooks relating to this Black Box, and in the process, she uncovers the real meaning both of the failed elevator and of the violence surrounding it, and it’s not what she, or we, thought it was.

When I heard of his "Underground Railway" I knew I had to explore Colson Whitehead's work. For me this earlier work is a rich conceit expressed elegantly and with a rare passionate intensity. A classic!

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